Preschool week 2, day 4

Today was a pajama day. Someone woke up a little grumpy and did not want to do school.
This was stated before breakfast. Not getting a good nights sleep, not being a morning person, and not having eaten yet could all be factors in this. Plus the fact that he is only 3, some days are just a little harder to get up and go.
So we kept it low key and I let Oliver stay in pajamas.
After a little guitar practice, we did our routine things, then reviewed our days of creation. Today we learned about day 6, when God created man, woman and the animals. I had drawn out day 6 for Oliver, and my people sketches had to be the worst yet. I have an art background and I'm pretty embarrassed at how poorly drawn Adam and Eve were! I don't think Oliver cared, and I don't think you can see the horrendous figures in this photo (ha!). But Oliver and I talked about what God did on this day, and I let him color with markers. We then moved onto counting. I had written numbers on some paper and Oliver had to match the number with the same amount of felt balls. It started out as more of a game for him to line up the balls (he loves to put things in a row) but once I helped him get a little more focused he did great counting and matching numbers with balls.

We ended our school time with color matching again. Oliver looked for black this time on the pictures. I especially like the black spots he found in the frog picture! It was a low key day for sure, but I'm proud of what Oliver is learning with identifying and counting.

Preschool Week 2, day 3

On this day, Oliver wanted to wear his Melissa and Doug construction vest down for school time. He had his hammers too at the table! I think he had three or four at one point but was content with the two (one for each hand) while working. We went outside for our weather check and I love this shot of him gleefully looking up into the sky at the sunshine. Oh sweet boy!
He then counted to 11 back inside and proudly found the number 11 on the calendar (that wasn't the date, but anything that encourages counting is great!)

We were working on day 5 of creation, fish and birds. I spent some time the night before going through magazines for pictures of birds and fish. I cut them out, and on a big sheet of construction paper wrote "fish" and "birds" on separate halves with a line drawn down the middle (I added in clouds and water lines later to help Oliver understand what went where). Oliver sorted through the pictures and places them on the right sides. He loves to search for things and complete puzzles, so this was a lot of fun for him.
A side note: I like to save the materials I make, even though they are so simple (um, also I need to get a laminator for these things) so that I can either use again later, or re-purpose. I thought that I could even use these images for sequencing later, having him sort the size from smallest to largest.

After sorting, we did a little painting with watercolors. I drew day five with fishes and birds for him on a piece of paper with the number 5 on it and he painted it in his choice of paint colors. Lots of green going on here!

After paints we worked on color finding. Oliver already knows his colors so I thought a recognition game would be fun for him. While I was searching for fish and bird pictures I cut out pictures that were just pretty or interesting with color in them. I laid these out and gave Oliver one color of felt pom poms (I picked up a bag of assorted colors at the dollar store) and had him find that color in the pictures. It was a good searching game for him to look at details and take his time. Some pictures only had a little bit of that color so he had to focus on it. He liked this game a lot! We ended the day with some more writing practice with his dry erase marker and worksheets. It was a good school day, we seemed to get a lot in!

Preschool Day 3

Okay day 3. Getting even more into routine now. Oliver knew right where to go when we started our school time and was just as excited to get started as he was the past couple days. Yah! We went right into our routine items (weather, calendar, prayer, verse, song) and then went to the first activity. Focusing on the number zero again, Oliver practiced with the dry erase marker. He is doing great making circles, I just keep asking him what number it is to help him remember it's not the letter "o" but the number zero. Kind of tough since they look the same. We also worked on day 3 of creation which is the trees and plants. While my intentions were to have him paint it, I changed my mind and chose something more textural. I tore up some different colored tissue paper (for grasses and flowers) and some brown construction paper (for trees, and sticks). He did great with the glue bottle today, and while there may have been some ginormous piles of glue on the paper, he got the motion down. Squeezing, stopping, putting paper on it, and tap, tap, tapping the paper. 

We then moved onto working on the letter D. This is something I added in. The curriculum doesn't introduce letters until week 3, and I was feeling ambitious and creative the night before while prepping and came up with this game for Oliver. Because he already knows all his letters (smart boy!) knowing what each one says is a brand new thing he has yet to get down. Next step to reading! So, I cut out some D's in some yellow construction paper (great idea-keep LOTS of construction paper on hand for teaching, crafts and learning play!), gathered up a few things that started with a D and put a yellow D next to each one. I didn't have a lot of items around but Oliver had fun searching for the yellow D's next to (or on, taped on a door). I was hoping that finding the D on the item a D started with would help him to visually lock it in his mind. "So door starts with what letter?" 

(I have to admit that I didn't keep up with follow through on this, as I decided to hold off on letters at the end of the week, I felt we were covering enough just sticking to the curriculum, and didn't need to rush as we'd be there soon enough in week 3. But it's still a fun idea I plan to use when we get in letters. Will update if it helps him remember!) 

We wrapped up our school time with a little watercolor painting. Working on colors here, again this information is not new to Oliver, he already knows his colors, but we'll keep on with basics to start and move into color theory (my hopes anyways) later. This ice cream cone project is in ABCJLM. You cut out ice cream scoops and a cone (I also did a cherry, um, over achiever here) and work your way through building the layers of colors on each scoop. I let Oliver paint the cone, and I think the cherry. He amazed me at his precision. I've never given him a shape to paint and he was very thorough in completely covering the entire shape with paint, rather than just making big strokes. Great job Oliver!